With an actor's relish for a scene the actor swapped, and the convalescent wept with rage as Hugh, having treated the second cane like the first, tendered it to him. "Don't take it!" cried his brother; "don't touch it!" And then to Gilmore: "Don't you hand me that one, either! Don't you dare!" Yet thereupon the actor dared, saying: "But for--others--I'd trounce you with it like a schoolmaster." The words were half drowned by Lucian, who snatched from Hugh the cane he tendered, answering the less crafty Julian, "Take it, you fool! take any odds they'll give!" and, while Julian complied, adding to Hugh: "Oh, you'll pay for this--along with the rest of it!" "You'll pay for this first!" put in Julian, "and with your lives--the pair of you!" Hugh and Gilmore merely turned again toward the stair, but a voice stopped them though addressed only to the twins. "Did you say pair?" it inquired. The boat was at the bank; her great wheels were still. The sun's last ray tipped the oak-leaf caps of her soaring chimneys. Once more from the cook-house rose the incense of coffee, hot rolls, and beefsteak, and from her myriad lamps soft yellow gleams fell upon the wind-rippled water and, out of view on the other side, into the tops of the dense willows. Over there the senator, the general, and the company that had gone with them looked down upon two movements at once. The funeral they could not help but see; the other was the wooding-up. The mud clerk had measured the corded pile, and the entire crew, falling upon it like ants, were scurrying back and forth, outward empty-handed, inward shoulder-laden, while those who stood heaping the loads on them sang as they heaped: "Do you belong to de Vot'ess' ban'?" "You don't mean just the pair, do you?" repeated Watson. He looked down loungingly from a side window of the pilot-house. "There's anyhow five on our side," he added. "I'm in that tea party." Julian had caught breath to retort, when from a new direction a beckon checked him and at the nearest corner of the texas he beheld again Ramsey. Mrs. Gilmore was not with her, but at her back were the nurse and Basile. The boy wore such an air of terror that the player instantly pressed toward him. Ramsey's beckon, however, was to Hugh. Her bright smile did not hide her mental pain, which drew him to her swiftly despite the twins' deepening frown. The two brothers heard the question she asked him when he was but half-way; perhaps she meant they should. "Can you call through Mr. Watson's speaking-tube to mom-a--and the commodore?" "Certainly." "Tell them"--tears suddenly belied her brightness--"to come up to the bishop, quick. I'm 'fraid--afraid----" A word or two more Hugh failed to hear, but even the twins, at their distance, read them on her lips: "The bishop's going to die."